If you live in California and have been a resident for more than a year, you may want to consider taking advantage of a private retirement plan. A private retirement plan is not like a 401(k) or a Roth IRA. It offers benefits that its counterparts cannot, and it’s worth discussing with your estate planning lawyer in California.

Choosing a retirement savings fund can be a tough choice, but in tough economic times and many unsavory characters in the lending business as well as predatory lenders laying in wait for people to slip up, protecting your retirement earnings has never been more important.

A private retirement plan has much better protection when creditors come knocking. Because what it held by a private retirement fund is considered “essential to your retirement,” the protection it offers is a definite upgrade from an IRA, which will only protect your assets to a certain degree and in specific circumstances.

But there’s news about private retirement funds that make them even sweeter: if you don’t have one set up yet, you may do so… and you can transfer monies and other assets from your IRA into your new private retirement plan and the assets will be protected after the transfer is complete.

Conversely, if you have an existing private retirement plan and you’d like to marry it into your IRA, you may do so, and the assets from the private retirement plan will still have the same protection it did before, so long as there is a paper trail that proves the assets were initially within the private retirement plan. You can work with your asset protection lawyer in Orange County to ensure you have all the proper documentation on file.

It’s food for thought and can offer a great deal of protection and can also avoid “fraudulent transfers” during tough times. It’s worth your time to discuss it with an experienced California business transactions attorney.

Protecting your assets is one of the best things you can do to ensure a good future for what you own, especially liquid assets, real property, and intellectual property. You may want to protect your assets for a number of reasons, but probably the top two most common reasons are to protect them from creditors or a spouse in the event of a divorce.

Asset protection in California is a great tool – but it’s a serious tool, and should not be used in a cavalier or careless manner. Those who try to use asset protection after a judgment or divorce papers have already been served are walking a fine line… a line that could be deemed fraud. Once this line has been crossed, the consequences are severe and things will not pan out in your favor.

The proper and responsible thing to do is sit down with a California asset protection attorney BEFORE you experience a life change that could affect your assets. Speak to your attorney about protecting what is rightfully yours before a divorce, before going into a new business , or before entering into any agreement that will mean you owe money to a creditor, including purchasing a new home or car.

So what’s the final word? Use asset protection a) before any major life changes, and b) with the help and guidance of a California asset protection lawyer.

If you have any questions or any uncertainties regarding when you should use asset protection, contact your Newport Beach asset protection lawyer today.

While there are many options in trusts that will help to protect your money, your money may already have a good degree of protection, depending on where it is and the manner in which it is kept. Before making any decisions about where you want your liquid assets to go, discuss your options with your Orange County asset protection lawyers.

In many cases, a great percentage of a person’s liquid assets may be held in a 401(k), Roth IRA, IRA, or other type of deferred compensation or retirement plan. Many of these plans will keep your assets safe in the event of a lawsuit, but again, the only way to be 100 percent sure of this is to discuss the parameters of the plan with your Orange County asset protection attorney.

While deferred compensation and retirement plans may keep your money safe in certain situations, laws change, and you must have a firewall to protect what is rightfully yours. That’s why you must have proper liability and/or malpractice insurance, depending on your profession. Protecting your liquid and hard assets with liability insurance is a way to create some peace of mind. Keeping your money in retirement funds will create more peace of mind. But if you’re the kind of person who wants to make sure that all your bases are covered, talk to your Orange County estate planning lawyer about the options you have for creating trusts for your retirement plan(s), your home, and the various soft and hard assets you use to run your business. Separating assets by way of trusts or by including them in different LLCs, you can avoid a lawsuit against your whole estate or whole worth.

Discuss the options you have for protecting your money: Whether it’s retirement plans or liability insurance, trusts, or a combination of all three, you can rest easy knowing that a highly experienced lawyer has reviewed your assets and can tailor a plan to meet your specific estate planning needs.

No matter how robust the precautions your California corporation takes to avoid accidents or other unforeseeable events that could cause a judgment, the possibility is always there. For this reason, it is important for you to understand the manner in which your assets could be taken from you in the event your business is sued and what a California business asset planning lawyer can help you.

To begin, there is something called an internal claim – this type of claim essentially covers the type of accidents or other occurrences that affect only one aspect of your business. Say, for example, that your corporation owns a restaurant and a patron was burned on a plate that was too hot when it arrived to his table even though your staff informed him the plate was too hot and to be cautious. In this instance the (internal) claim could only go after the assets of the restaurant (such as equipment there and the real property owned by the restaurant), and not the assets held by other companies under the umbrella of your corporation. In addition, this claimant would not be able to sue for your personal assets.

The next type of claim is an external claim. This type of claim applies to another kind of scenario. For example, if your corporation owns a forklift and a pedestrian walks by while the forklift operator is not paying attention (and found to be negligent) and hits the pedestrian, the injured party may be able to sue for other assets held by other entities of your corporation and even go after your personal assets.

Both internal and external claims are good cause for steel belted asset protection. A California asset protection attorney such as Jeff Matsen can help you devise an asset protection plan in which different entities owned by your corporation are held by many different companies. An LLC can be established to hold real property, another can be set up to own equipment, and Matsen may also suggest an asset protection trust to own your home – this will make it far more difficult for a claimant to sue for your personal real property.

Talk to a California estate planning attorney who offers asset protection for corporations. It could be the best business decision you ever make.

If you are a small business owner in California, you may already know how difficult it can be to run your business. Aside from all the work it takes to pay overhead, manage employees, market products and services, you must also consider your quarterly profit margins and ultimately determine how well you are doing financially.

One of the many things successful small business owners overlook is the proper separation of assets, including real property, liquid assets, and intellectual property. Without California asset protection, a judgment brought against your business or you as an individual could cost everything you have earned. The way to avoid “getting taken to the cleaners” by a lawsuit or other claim is to protect what you have in separate trusts, companies, and if married, through marital property planning.

Depending on how much you own and how large your business is, you may need to set up multiple California LLCs and trusts to shelter everything from your home to your business equipment, any other real property, and any liquid assets. The way this works best is by separating what you own as much as possible so that if a judgment is brought against one entity in your possession, it cannot go after the assets or monies that are held by other entities you possess.

For example, if someone sues your company by name, they can only take what is owned by that company, and not your personal assets. If the company is an LLC and all it owns is the equipment used to run, the judgment can only go after those assets. Conversely, if someone were to sue you as an individual, they would not be able to go after the assets held by your company, or those held in any trust that is not in your name, including an offshore trust held in the name of a trustee.

If you are a small business owner, consider estate planning and asset protection in California before something undesirable occurs. Jeff Matsen can design a California asset protection plan for the protection of all you’ve worked so hard to attain. Start today by contacting Jeff Matsen, the Los Angeles and Newport Beach wealth management expert awarded a perfect score from the The Nationally Renowned Attorney Rating Service.